How I Make Money Online... over and over again
I've been in Winnipeg for the past couple of weeks and in between taking care of some Lodge business I spent the best part of a day tutoring an old friend in the art of making money online. I've known Jim for about 15 years - he's a mechanic and travels north every few months to work on various pieces of heavy equipment. He is an avid car buff and rebuilds old cars in his spare time. This led him to join several internet communities who shared his passion which then led him to start his own website which led him to learning that some people could make money with a website which led him to start searching for methods in which to do so which led to him finding a blog that explained the process. In Jim's words "I spent 3 days reading the blog before bothering to see who the writer was - I clicked the about page and fell off my chair - it was YOU!"
This has happened frequently over the past year. I have tried to separate my Lodge business from my online business but more and more friends from the "real" world have been coming across this blog and while they don't know me by my online nick name (I got it years ago when I bar tended my way through University) they quickly put it together when they see the about page. Unfortunately this is something I was hoping to avoid. Let me explain.
I spent most of yesterday sitting in the airport waiting on plane delays (weather related) and finally took a peak at my mountain of emails that have accumulated over the last two weeks. As usual there were a few that I wish I had read in a timely fashion. (Court, Monika, Chanya, Frank - sorry, will be getting back to you today) The rest can be categorized as follows; people asking me to review their blog, people asking me to JV with them, people asking to advertise on this blog, people writing really nice comments about how my blog has helped them and not asking for anything (thank you all), people wanting to trade links, people asking to pay me to mentor them and of course the usual spam. There are also a fair number asking me why their blog isn't ranking well on Google without supplying me with all the pertinent info.
Having spent a day with Jim I learned a great deal. He reminded me of just how confusing this whole MMO biz is and gave me an appreciation of just what beginners are facing these days. I confess that I have lost touch with a beginners point of view as it has become a fairly easy game for me. Bruce who runs a work from home blog asked me on the Affiliate Academy
Bruce's comment
forum a few weeks ago about this very issue;
You always make it sound simple but I am questioning what I am missing and probably others are missing as well or everyone would be succeeding like you are.
I worked hard and was seeing some real nice results up until about a month and a half ago. I was a happy camper as I was solidly on page one of Google for a handful of terms and getting more and more search traffic.
I've mentioned this before but now the bottom has come off and I am way down to the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th pages if at all for most of my terms. It started and has continued where I would take two steps back (in the rankings) and then one step back up. Over and over until I am where I am now. (talking about my main blog only here)
I have done nothing differently to my knowledge to start this downfall and so I am wondering how someone like you (or anyone) can have such spectacular success. I have now gotten out of AMA and deleted all my articles so that no more will be published but this all started way before that.
This is my big question: Is it the quality of your links? I have to think that your ability to get better links than most is a very important factor in your success. You write with the best of them but it seems that your SEO can only take you so far.
Bruce's comment has stuck with me and after working with Jim I've mulled this issue over a great deal.
Why does this seem so simple to me and not to others?
Put the coffee pot on and I will tell you all a story.
When I started online web 2.0 didn't exist. Social Media didn't exist. I started out knowing from day 1 that if you are going to make any money online you needed a steady stream of traffic and the only way to get that traffic is with Google.
I have never changed my position on this. Google is still and always has been the best source of traffic online. Social media showed up and everyone jumped on it because it is easy to get traffic using social means. The problem is that social traffic is sporadic, requires hours and hours of work to maintain and in the end it doesn't convert well into money. You have all heard this from me before but in spite of this almost everyone of you still chases it and this is your downfall.
I had several emails informing me of yet another list of "Top 100 Make Money Online Blogs" that doesn't have me included on the list. My readers like to rib me about such things and I must have a hundred emails asking why I am not on the former 45n5 list. The fact is that these lists are part of the problem - many of you are trying to get on these lists and that's because at the heart of the matter you are a blogger looking for recognition from other bloggers. You want to be the next Problogger and spend all your time trying to get attention from other bloggers thinking this is the road to making money. Well yes it is a road but you have no idea about just how much traffic you need from the social arena before any serious advertising offers show up.
Do you realize that most large advertisers won't even look at you if you aren't pulling in at least 250,000 unique visitors a month? Do you have any idea of how much traffic that is? That's 8300 visitors a day - every day. That's 350 visitors every hour or almost 6 visitors a minute - every minute of every hour of every day.
You think that stumbleupon or digg or making a top 100 list or commenting on blogs is going to get 6 visitors a minute to your site month in and month out? And now the harsh part (and I don't mean to insult) you think that your site is so unique and interesting that 250 thousand people will keep coming back to read it. Okay - so you realize that maybe you aren't the most talented and interesting writer so you resort to gimmicks like starting a Top 100 list in hopes that people will spread the word and maybe even use your Badge and send you links. Or you will run a contest. Or you will give away a free ebook to pad your RSS numbers. Or you will come up with any number of tricks or treats to get people to your site. And then they are gone...
Perhaps the hardest thing to realize is that you aren't talented enough to capture 250k of readers based on your writing alone. Let's face it - if you are an exceptional writer word will get out and you will eventually have thousands of followers without you having to chase them down. Think about that. If you need contests and lists to keep people coming back then maybe you aren't producing value that will do it naturally.
But Griz - social media gets me links.
Sure it does - for your name or blog name. All useless. Ranking in Google for your name won't get you traffic.
Yes many of you finally understand the power of keyword anchored backlinks but you are trying to get them using social media.
And that is your downfall. You are at heart a blogger and not an internet marketer. You want to rank on Google but wouldn't it be nice to combine that with becoming well known.
I spend zero time using social media - okay, I have stumbled a few friends blogs in the past and tried everything half assed just to see what the fuss was about but always toss these networks to the side.
I do one thing and one thing only - I study Google.
I experiment constantly while you guys are socializing. I don't read about SEO from others - I learn it first hand. I have developed a system that while changing as G changes still proves to be the most effective way to make money online with the least work involved.
The first rule I have is focus on the task at hand - making money. Toss your dreams of becoming famous out the window as it will simply sidetrack all your efforts.
Find a Niche
Yes I slap up hundreds of blogs to test the waters with but I do have a general system in place in order to find the best niches.
I always start with the goal of making money from Adsense. Why? Because it is the largest advertising network in the world. 5.5 billion in sales last quarter - 1.7 billion in profit. Google has a 67% share of search traffic and is by far the biggest source of traffic online. All the social media sites combined don't handle any where near the daily traffic that Google does.
If you want to make money online then go with who provides the most traffic and use the largest advertiser. In this case Google just happens to be both. A no brainer.
How I do It
I look for niches that can provide me with at least 1000 visitors a day. I didn't say keyword - I said niche.
I look for niches that have enough keywords to provide me with 1000 visitors a day.
I want a niche that lets me build keyword rank in ascending order from least competitive to highly competitive. (I will show you what I mean below)
I want a niche that is competitive.
I want a niche that has lots of Adsense advertisers.
I want a niche that allows me to write long rambling posts.
An Example
Make Money Online
Just for the hell of it let us pretend I could possibly dominate a niche dominated by such well known bloggers as Darren Rowse, Shoemoney, John Chow and the rest of the A-List. And just for a lark let us pretend I could do it using a free Blogger Blog that looks like crap. Why - well maybe if I did people might catch on that you don't need a fancy looking site like the experts claim and that you don't really have to spend money on hosting either. Yes - a bold claim I know. Some people might even figure out that nothing makes people click on Adsense ads better than an ugly site.
So if I was to take on this task how would I do it.
First off I would target a long tail keyword that contains all my shorter competitive keywords in the long tail.
I would use a variation of the long tail for my URL.
example
"How to Make Money Online for Beginners" - my long tail
makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com - my URL
or
"How to Learn Knitting for Beginners"
or
"How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies for Beginners"
These are all examples of killer long tails. Why? Because they contain "How to" and "Beginners" in them. One term "How to" is used by people looking for information. I use "Beginners" because people will notice it in the serp's and click on your site because they are likely beginners looking for info on "How to" do something. And they contain my prime and secondary keywords as well. Let me show you.
How to Make money Online for Beginners - least competitive. A Long Tail
How to Make Money Online - more competitive. A secondary keyword.
How to Make Money - very competitive. 50,000 searches. A secondary keyword.
Make Money Online - extremely competitive. 27,000 searches. A secondary keyword.
Make Money - really extremely competitive. - 200,000 searches. A secondary keyword.
Money - the big Kahuna - 3.3 million searches last month. The prime keyword.
This niche also allows for literally hundreds of related keywords that you can rank well for and though the traffic might not be much for any particular term they all add up.
No comments:
Post a Comment